


Ghost Apologies

by FeathersMcStrange



Series: Doppelgänger (Warehouse 13/The Following) [1]
Category: The Following, Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Twins, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Long Lost/Secret Relatives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve Jinks and Mike Weston are identical twins.</p>
<p>Steve is dead. Nobody has called Mike yet. Which means Claudia now has to make the worst phone call of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Apologies

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A Softer World - I wonder how many hauntings go unreported because the wail and clank of chains is still better than an empty house.
> 
> I’m so sorry for this you guys, this is what happens when actors have twins. I found out that my fave character in The Following was played by the identical twin of the guy who plays my fave in Warehouse 13 and. This happened.
> 
> I've got a follow up piece that takes place after The Metronome Thing that I might post.

There’s a stool by the window that she used to sit on, before she had to use words like ‘used to’ when talking about things she did with him. One of the legs was shorter than the other. It wobbled every time you sat down, and more than once it was nothing but S- but his quick dart to the side, large hand suddenly bracing her elbow, that kept her from toppling in an undignified fashion straight to the floor. Claudia loved that stool. She sat on it while he did whatever it was he did all day, teasing the shit out of him and laughing brighter than the lightbulb set into the ceiling when he threw back as good as she pitched at him.

She can see him clear as day, sitting on his bed with sunlight casting shadows over the curves and valleys of his familiar face.

The image of his body flashes in her mind, and Claudia chokes on the scream building inside her, the same one that had clawed its way from her throat the day she had run in to see him there, murdered in that building at dusk.

The leg of the stool snaps, sending her crashing to the floor, and the phantom of his hand on her elbow, the echo of his laughter,  _burns_.

With a bruised side and scraped forearm she sits downstairs, beside the chair that used to be his, and looks at Artie dully, knowing that he is deeply worried about her, but not… caring. She can’t force herself to stomach any of the lunch on the table in front of her. Every piece of her hurts and all she wants to do is curl up in bed, pull the covers over her head, and dream about how it used to be.

Dream about sitting next to him with a photo album in her lap, laughing at what a gawky twelve year old he had been. About the stories he had spun for her, of the family none of them knew, his long gone sister, his three brothers, one of whom he had always felt responsible for, though the age gap between them lay at seven minutes.

Seven minutes his twin brother's senior, but still he-

It hits her in an instant, a sudden, sharp jab to the gut.

“Oh god.”

Artie’s head snaps up and he stares at her, concern nearly boiling over. “What? What is it?”

“Mike. Somebody needs to call Mike. Oh  _god_.”

Now everyone is staring like they think she’s lost it. Maybe she has. The point stands. It’s been days,  _days_ , and Mike has lived as usual, thinking that his brother is okay, thinking that he is still a twin with an identical copy of himself, safe in the middle of nowhere South Dakota.

Nothing  _bad_ happens in  _South Dakota_.

Except something has, and Mike doesn’t  _know_.

“His brother. Um. Michael Weston. Twin. Works for the FBI, has a different- different last name, uh. They changed them to keep- keep each other safe. Somebody needs to call Mike, I need to call Mike, he’s his identical twin and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t  _know_  that Steve-”

It is the first time anyone has spoken his name since Claudia agonizingly howled it at him over and over in the warehouse where he had died.

The question ‘since when does Steve have a twin’ is caught in Artie’s throat, struck dead there when he realizes that he cannot think of Steve in the present tense any more, unable to force himself to do so in past.

They let Claudia go alone, dialing the red cellphone phone with numb fingers, pressing it to her ear, accompanied only by the bitter, intrusive memory that the way Steve had died was monochrome, pale bruised skin and slate grey skies, clouded steely blue irises empty, surrounded by a sea of muted coal colored carpet. Not a hint of red in sight. When they had talked about dying, Steve had said in a tone the color of a grin that he hoped he went down in a blaze of glory, taking as many of the bad guys out with him as possible. It had been three am and they were on their way home from a tough job, Steve’s arm hanging out the window as he drove down the highway, a caffeine hyped Claudia in the passenger’s seat, asking him if you had a choice, Jinksy, how would you die?

When Mike answers the phone, Claudia starts to cry, because it’s Steve’s voice she hears. The only thing she can cough out before she breaks completely, sliding to the floor, is “Steve.”

Mike is repeating ‘no, no, please, no, don’t, no, please’ and all Claudia can rip from herself is ‘I’m so sorry’. There is a loud, abrupt sound from the other end, and she wonders for a second if he’s been shot again, like the story Steve told her about last year. But no.

He has dropped the phone, with a _czzrt_ of clattering static, but she can hear him screaming on the other end, the paniced exclamations of whomever was with him at the time nearly drowned out by audible raw grief. Claudia remembers the news Steve had gotten just before this whole mess started, before betrayal and guilt and running up a flight of stairs into a near empty building to find her best friend staring sightlessly at the ceiling, pale neck bent at a sickeningly inhuman angle.

She remembers answering the phone, to the tear choked voice on the other end asking if he could please speak to Steve Jinks. How later Steve had said with a hollow voice and stunned eyes that his father was dead. Murdered.

Claudia thinks about Mike Weston, about the twin she hadn’t known Steve had until she turned over a photo she wasn’t supposed to, heard the story of a mother and a father, of a sister he missed dearly, of two brothers who were eight and nine years older, one who was seven minutes younger. She thinks about how in such a short time Mike Weston’s family has been broken apart into pieces. First his father was murdered, his mother refusing to speak to him, his brothers scattered to the wind.

And now Claudia is putting the final nail in it, delivering the news that the piece of home he thought he couldn’t ever lose is lost, that his twin is dead. He has, in the space of a few short weeks, lost his whole family to pain and violence, and to think, he had once boasted of being the optimist of the two. Steve was realistic but Mike saw only the good in the world.

Except now there’s not a shred of good left for him.

Claudia does not have enough ‘sorry’s in the world to give the man she can hear still on the other end of the line, lending voice to the world ending sense of ‘god he’s  _gone_ ' that holds both of them in its clutches.

In the doorway, Leena watches Claudia clutch the cell phone to her chest, chin back and her whole body trembling as she silently says over and over again ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’. The creak and moan of ancient floorboards is the only sound aside from the storm outside, but Claudia does not look for the source. It sounds like a ghost, wandering the halls lost and alone, and any other day she would investigate, some part of her that’s seen the impossible wondering if maybe it was a ghost.

Leena watches her sit still, the phone in her hand and the words still falling soundlessly from tremor ridden lips. She doesn’t know if Claudia is ever going to hunt ghosts in the attic again, or ride with the windows open just to feel for a moment like she is flying. Leena wonders with an ache in her heart how many hauntings go unreported because the wail and clank of ghostly chains are still better than an empty house.

She wonders if this house is ever going to feel anything but empty again.


End file.
